Grimmtooth's Troops

She woke up alone, as was often the case.  The early morning sounds of Dalaran wafted through the open window.  Not what it used to be, she thought. Dalaran after the Cataclysm was much quieter, even restful for the weary souls left in the wake of Arthas’ demise. Even the air seemed more invigorating than it was elsewhere in Northrend.

When she sat up, she noticed a rose on the pillow next to hers. The stem was wrapped in a bit of parchment, and the parchment in turn wrapped with a red ribbon.  Smiling, she untied the ribbon and read the note therein.

Today’s your first day back on the job!  No matter what, we’re all very proud of you!

– A.

First day back. Right.  Oh, bother.

Rubbing her eyes blearily, she set about getting ready for the day ahead. Checking her lists, and making sure her things were packed right. Every bit of gear gemmed just so, enchanted correctly, reforged, in what the Sisters at the Temple assured her, with the latest configuration for a successful Discipline priest.

On her dresser was another letter. For what seemed like the thousandth time, she picked it up. It had arrived three days ago, and her life had Officially Been Turned Upside-Down as a result.

Jasra,

The time has come, lass; we need you.  I’m not sure what is going on in this new place that the Navy has found, but we know the Horde’s on the move after they destroyed Theramore, and this is likely the next place they’ll be poking around. The Alliance needs all the good healers it can muster, so I have to ask; will you lend a hand?

I wish I could let you stay where you are for the duration without even asking; you earned your "retirement" in Icecrown.  And even if you choose not to come, I won’t argue; it’s your decision.

However, should you  decide to return to "active duty", see Sky Admiral Rogers in Stormwind. I’ve put a good word in for you, so she’ll be watching out for your arrival.  I think you’ll like her. She reminds me of Flora, but with more angries.

I have to close now; the Skyfire’s leaving within the hour. I’ll be scouting ahead to see what’s what. Hopefully we’ll get together in some agreeable tavern in this place called "Panderia".

Your favorite uncle,

Grimmtooth

Well, if it was him asking, she wasn’t going to let him down.

She had left but she always found herself coming back here. The years after Arthas’ fall had been spent here with the Azuregazes at the Legerdemain, doing such exciting things as making beds, preparing cheese platters, and serving wine to guests that had no idea that their serving wench had once stood before Arthas’ most terrifying creations without flinching. 

It was blissfully, quietly, wonderfully, uneventful.

Evenings were spent with Arille and Amisi, in a warmth that had nothing to do with hearths and everything to do with how her heart spoke to her.

Grimmtooth and his clan would always be her "family", and just a word from any of them would bring her to their side. As near as made no difference, even if not of her blood, they might as well have been.

But Amisi and Arille had found a way into her heart that was unlike anything she had felt before. Her family "of choice", then?

And now she had to leave one family to help the other.

Properly dressed and packed, she drifted down to the common room of the inn for breakfast. Arille grinned and waggled a hand at her as she took her accustomed table. Early morning tasks for him included taking inventory and restocking for the night to come, but he was never too busy to make her feel at home.

Enjoying a light meal of cheese, fruit, and mulled wine, she went over her lists once again.  She almost didn’t notice Amisi coming down the stairs. Her smile shone out amid her dusky complexion.  "Well, you’re up early."

Jasra smiled back; "You may have snuck off without waking me, but I did notice." 

Amisi motioned her up. "Well, let’s have a look at you. After close to two years in retirement, I’m not sure you remember how to dress yourself."  Dutifully, the grinning Night Elf stood and bowed.  "I stand ready for inspection, madam."

Amisi looked up at her. "Your halo’s on crooked."  Jasra’s grin got wider. "This surprises you?"  As Amisi reached up to adjust it, Jasra reached out to stop her.  "Don’t bother, the thing never sits straight on me anyway." Amisi chuckled. "Well, all right then."  She took a seat at Jasra’s table, and Jasra reseated herself.

They traded small talk and ate for a while, then Amisi took on a serious mien. "No matter where you go, you always have this place to come home to.  We’ll miss every moment you’re gone. Nothing will be the same without you here. Come back as soon as you can."

"I will. You two are the only reason I can even go out there."  Looking around, she realized everything was prepared.  "I guess it’s time for me to go, isn’t it?"  Amisi’s sad smile was her only answer.

Standing, she hefted her pack and her staff. "I’ll be back as soon as I can. "  A quick grin; "Don’t sell my stuff."

As she passed the bar, Arille stepped out to block her path.  "You’re not getting out of here without a hug, m’dear."  His voice was rough for a change; his hug was warm and welcome, as always. "Don’t embarrass us", he whispered in to her ear, and then ducked back behind the bar, laughing. Nobody ever warned me that Highborn had a such an odd sense of humor.

As she turned, Amisi was waiting. "What he said", as she hugged Jasra. "Come back to us."

Jasra stepped foot outside of the Legerdemain. Looking back, she saw comfort, good friends, and more. Looking forward, uncertainty. Danger. Excitement. She grinned at the Unknown.  "Well, let’s get this thing started, shall we?"  Calling her favorite flying carpet, she set out of for the portal to Stormwind – and new adventures.

OOC-ly, beware the 4th wall

I’ve been rewriting this for weeks.

In a way, Jasra represents all that soured me on raiding in Wrath; not the events themselves, but an inability to deal with certain things in her environment. Thus, when Cata came out, Jasra gave voice to those feelings. It was months later before Grimm found a home with the Effers, which profoundly changed my outlook and helped me gain a certain perspective.  Thus setting the stage, Flora came along and helped advise the Bunnies in some seriously late but fashionable T11 and T12 raiding, and it was good.

To make this possible, the Bunnies’ long-suffering GM set aside her main, a mage, and filled in for Team Heals. Her main, therefore, didn’t see ANY tier gear, and what she had was purchased from endless nights of grinding Heroics.  In the end, even she burned out and we pretty much only saw her on our two designated raid nights.

So, guilty feelings, I has some.  Even if it’s not justified.  But also if it is.

Having mentally mended some fences and resolved to be more a grown-up about some things (seriously interesting concept when you consider my RL age), it was decided that our dear GM should get a chance to shine with her mage once again, and Jas was just going to have to suck it in and start flinging Frisbees again.  I think our GM will be happy with Frost’s new idioms, and she, like Illume, has been fond of the Frosty ways, so it’ll be a homecoming for her, of sorts.

It’s just a damned shame that playing Warlocks is so much FUN now.   But it’s worth it if it brings a smile to our GM’s face and motivates her to come out and play more often.  And I get that she’s reluctant to let go of the priest altogether, so Flora may see some action from time to time after all.

The mood of this piece is one of awakening, of renewal, and of finding one’s place in the world. Jasra had a place in the world, lost it, found a new place in the world, and now she’s going to try to keep both within her grasp.  I won’t say exactly what kind of relationship she has with the Azuregazes, as it’s more fun not to know, but it’s a deep connection, and it will be kept alive.

In closing, and totally unrelated: getting the damned Halo to work right in WoW Model Viewer is a gigantic pain in the bottom. It would be a lot easier with true chroma-key software, but one goes to blog with the tools one has, not the tools one wants. In the end, it was just easier to shoop it in manually. Bleah.

And now we hit "publish."

Recently, Blizz announced that raiding content in MoP will be gated, which is to say, on Day One there will be no entry to raid instances.

This, of course, is regarded as a bad idea by some people.  Not, mind you, people that I am in general agreement with.

On September 25, 2012, Mists of Panderia will go live.  For most of us, that means lots of new content.  But to a small subset of people, a sliver on the Big Pie Chart of WoW Subscribers, it means that they need to race AS FAST AS POSSIBLE to level 90 so they can start wiping on the first raid boss.  This triggers the start of the race to World First boss kills.

Now, the reason I don’t see eye to eye with these people is because it seems to me to be abjectly stupid to pay for something that you’re not going to use most of.  And, if you’re ever followed my angry tweets, you know that one thing that really gets my kilt in a twist is abject stupidity.

Now, if you’re at all engaged at this moment, you’re probably wondering why I give a damn what someone else does with his or her life. And that’s a very good question.  Best I can explain, I’m just sick and tired of enabling the foolish and entitled people of the world.  I’m just over that. Time and test cycles are best spent elsewhere.

Yes, I realize this comes down on what is considered the lesser side of the casual v. hardcore debate. I don’t really care. The opinion of those that feel entitled to a leet hardcore experience, at my expense at times¹, is something I just don’t give two waggles for.

I’m glad to see Blizzard finally getting just as tired as I am of this sort of stuff.  It’s as if they’re saying, "Fine, you want to ignore all our hard work and go straight to endgame? Be our guest. Next week, after we’ve stabilized things enough to care about .05%² of the player base’s complaints about how the endgame content isn’t juuuuust right."

Maybe you feel I’m being harsh.  Well, I know what harsh looks like.  Have a look.

At least I haven’t insulted anyone’s mom.

At any rate, I think it’s a great idea for keeping the anticipation going as we³ may or may not bump up against the gate.  Maybe there’s an achievement for a full clear of the previous raid’s Heroic content before the next comes online. Maybe they’ll tell a story⁴ as part of the gating. Whatever it is, I insist on having fun doing it,and feeling not the least guilty about not being in the top one percent of the top ten percent, or whatevers.

I hope that doesn’t offend anyone. But if it does, feel free to call me out on the forums.  Or, here, if you want an actual response.

1. Hello, 25-man-only instances in Vanilla and BC. [↩]
2. This number is totally made up, by myself, by the way. [↩]
3. By which I mean, the vast majority of raiders, which is still a tiny, infinitesimal sliver of the total player base. [↩]
4. Leetsauce raidrs go "BOOOORING!" [↩]

In which I realize that WoW raiding and software development have a common element.

How does this relate to raiding? Well, it has to do with learning from one’s mistakes.

In the software development world, we have to face the same old problems repeatedly because, instead of defining what a product should do clearly, we just say "it should do what the old one did" and then re-implement the same old mistakes.  Since we are implementing "anew", our regression test suite often drops product-specific test cases and misses it initially. Which always devolves into exchanges like "why didn’t you test this?" followed by "we didn’t realize it was THERE."

Software developer Jamie Zawinski stated the syndrome fairly well as CADT – Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers. Its fairly universal across the development world. I’ve often stated it as "developers like bright shiny things." Code monkey not want fix broken code. CODE MONKEY WANT MAKE NEW CODE FOR OTHER CODE MONKEY TO FIX.

Now, imagine if we raided that way. Maybe you’ve actually BEEN in a raid lead that way. After one or two tries doing it THIS WAY with mild improvements, we switch to a WHOLE NEW WAY, fail a couple of times, then switch again, and again, and so forth. In other words, we never execute any raid strat fully, just creating new ones that – we promise – won’t fail like the last one.

Well, that’s just silly. All good raid teams know that it takes time and patience and practice and, most importantly, LEARNING in order to get anywhere on a new raid boss. How to catch the signs that mean you should blow a defensive cooldown. When to notice that the adds are about to come out. The signs that now is the time to use that special boss button. Watching a vid only helps so much. Doing – and, more importantly – failing will fill in those final blanks and make it possible to progress to the next task in the chain towards the boss kill.

If all software development progressed like raid progression for successful raiding teams, our world would have much more awesome software and far less jaundiced eye-rolling as we faced yet another BSOD as reward for trying to save our work.

So there’s a take-away for the successful raid leader. If you can lead a raid team through progression, you have skills valuable in the software development industry. If you put it that way to your prospective boss, you’ll get some odd looks, but I’m sure you’ll find a way to explain it. You are, after all, obviously pretty bright.

Since our home (aka Grimm Actual’s computer) lost its hard drive, we’ve been existing on a six or seven-year old laptop with, well, “adequate” furnishings.   In realtor terms, it’s a nice little fixer-upper.

There’s no way Grimm’s going to burden his team with a laggy system that may or may NOT let him know in time that it’s the GREEN slime this time around when he does Skittle Balls. T13 raiding does require a little bit more precision to succeed, or even survive, and he’s just a bit doubtful that the old thing will handle Vent plus WoW while soaking on Ultraxion (aka Purple Dragon Balls).

The Bunnies, however, are desperate for bodies, being lucky to bring nine to the show, and often having to do with just eight. Big puppy dog eyes (well, big bunny rabbit eyes) were used to get me to just show up and do whatever it is that I could do.

Naturally, I’m tail-end Charlie on the DPS meters, but after a quick scramble to get some boss mods on I was facing Magmaw in 12 FPS glory. Fortunately, I’m getting cozy with the spell rotation, and action bar layouts are saved to the server, so I was able to do what Warlocks do best.

NOOOOOOO.

That’s better.

Anyway.

I’m told that plenty of people raid under these conditions. I have no idea how they do it on the progression stuff. All I know is that there are a bunch of us rooting for that hard drive to make a speedy re-appearance.

Between Grimm in DS and my own undergeared butt in Heroics, we’ve finally – as of last night – gotten to see all the threads in the endgame story for this expansion¹.  It’s gratifying to see that the endgame has a more solid narrative than ever before.  Only twice does it succumb to what I call the "Gallery of bads" syndrome.

If you remember the pilot movie for Babylon 5, you no doubt remember the Gratuitous Alien Gallery, a venue that Sinclair and Alexander cut through on the way to somewhere more useful.  The Alien District, as it was called, resembled more of a toxic petting zoo than a place where aliens lived and carried out business – glass booths with aliens standing in them, cubicles with aliens standing them, empty spaces with aliens standing in them – you get the picture.

A lot, it might be noted, like Icecrown Citadel, and many other raids. Just dudes. Standing around. Doing standing around dude things.

Some examples.

• Karazhan – you have to beat up the stable boy, the castellan, and a travelling group of troubadours to even get close to the guy that’s making the place go bad².  And even then, there are rooms off to the side with a couple of dragons, a bereaved father, and a studious demon that you can go beat up just for funsies.
• Icecrown Citadel – With an airship at your disposal, you can just fly to the spire and take care of business. But instead we go the long hard way through a gallery of bads, none which even matter, and some which were plain made up – had no previous connection to lore – for this instance.
• Naxx – For this gallery of bads to even make SENSE, they had to force you to clear each wing as part of unlocking a portal to the one guard dragon that stands between you and the big bad.
• The Eye – Aside from Alar (and who doesn’t want a shot at a flaming mount?), you can walk right in to Kael’s throne room and start beating on him. And speaking of dudes just standing around. Don’t belfs own chairs?
• Ulduar – After taking down XT and Kologarn, not much stopping you from just jumping down into the pit and getting jiggy with Yogg. Well, aside from the invisible barrier that forces you to go the long way, but it is not mentioned as part of the lore.

The common thread here is that you have a bunch people standing around scratching their butts, doing nothing but looking decorative until a bunch of mercenaries comes along to rob them.  You don’t have to kill off Moroes³ – he doesn’t drop a key. You don’t have to kill off Putricide ⁴ to get to the Lich King. Notwithstanding game mechanics, why exactly is Ignis standing around? What is the purpose of Aran, other than fleshing out some lore that didn’t, really, exist? 

While this is coming off as a rant against how artificial and contrived the circumstances of most raid bosses are constructed, it is intended as praise for Dragon Soul.

The five-mans leading up to it, while somewhat contrived and confusing at times, do actually link up to the raid elegantly.  The escort quest at the end exists for a reason (as any raider knows, the front door is blocked). And, granted, the "echoes" do fall into the "contrived bad dude just standing around thinking bad dude thoughts" trope, but the next instance in the chain more than makes up for it in integrating the bosses into the story. ⁵

The only raid-related boss issue in this case are Zonza and Ballchucker.  They exist only to be beaten and looted. They serve no part of the story other than to stand around and look lootish. Had they been integrated better⁶ I’d have no complaint, but they weren’t. They block nothing, unlock nothing, drop nothing related to the story⁷. They are Miscellaneous Bad Dudes. In holes.

But, overall, the endgame for this expansion has proven to be far superior to what we’ve seen before.  I don’t know how much of an actual story that MoP will have. If it does, I hope they improve on the linear story-based raid instance over the collection-of-loot-piñatas rogues gallery approach. It was a lot more fun and a lot more interesting.

1. Minus Deathwing, which Grimm is working diligently on. [↩]
2. Oh, and before a "fix" in 3.0.2, you didn’t even have to do any of the lower castle stuff – you could go straight to Curator if you didn’t want loot. [↩]
3. Within the story line – I’m not counting locked doors suddenly popping open, which isn’t the case here anyway. [↩]
4. Ditto. [↩]
5. Plus, bare-chested Nelf Illidan has to count for something in somebody’s scorebook. Flora like. [↩]
6. "To get to the temple, you must take this tunnel, heroes! And beware the Faceless Ones!"  I dunno, that was too easy. Should Fargo send me a check? [↩]
7. While I love it so, loot doesn’t count for this discussion. [↩]

Pontificator In Chief what’s no longer doing MMO blogging Tobold went back to the well to pontificate, yet again, how DPS R Bad Peepuls, yawl¹.

If by the tone of my opening paragraph you conclude that I stand in direct opposition to his conclusion, one would be right in supporting your impression, for I certainly do.

In Tobold’s world, everything lives in a theoretical vacuum, a world in which the likes of Gevlon can be as correct as he, for neither of them really engage in what I would consider practical theory crafting.  Gevlon’s world is one in which everyone is a total rat bastard on toast, out to get you and deflower your mum.  Tobold’s word differs slightly in that everyone involved is somehow a robot following preprogrammed pathways that have no dependence on those around them.

When isolated in such a way from reality, conclusions such as "healers and tanks are the only responsible gamers" can be fully formed and realized without spending any amount of time reflecting on the premise that the problem is not the group dynamic, but, in reality, the LACK of group dynamic.

First of all, I wish to lay out some bona fides here.  I prefer the DPS life because I like making things go boom, whether it’s a gun or a fireball. I have, however, also ran a toon through an entire expansion as a healer, two-healing my way through all the Wrath raids (which kinda explains the eventual burnout, but hey – BONA FIDES!). So I am INTIMATELY familiar with two of the three roles in this game.  I’m not so certain about mister Tobold.

What I DO know is that Tobold’s over-simplistic view of the DPS role is as shallow as a Las Vegas lounge lizard, and only half as agreeable.  His view is that the typical DPS player is the kind of person that sits around the periphery space-bar-jumping over and over and pausing occasionally to go "hurr de hurr durr" in between the occasional frostbolt and side trip to the nearest burning patch of fire on the floor.

What he described was the average BAD DPSer.

If you’ve spent any time being any good as a DPSer over the past three expansions, you’ll have noticed something.  You’ve got a LOT of responsibility going on.  Soaking crystals. Pulling down drakes. Banging gongs. AoEing parasites. Run into the portal. DPS the brain, but not too much. Burn down the Sons. Hell, I don’t think many of the bosses in this last expansion ever allowed a DPSer to sit around and pew pew pew, though Ultraxion comes close. But you have to DIG to find something from Kara on forward that didn’t offer new challenges to the DPS team.  Challenges that the healers were usually excused from.

So, you want to talk responsibility, Mister Tobold Sir, you go right ahead.  All it’s really doing is making it look like you never set foot in Firelands, for starters.

There is a group dynamic in raiding and instancing that changes depending on the people you are with. LFD and LFR represent the worst-case scenario. You get the utter dregs from there.  You can’t really judge the game in its intended form by those examples.

But if you take a group of repeat raiders and repeat dungeoneers, you get a different reality.  In that reality, bad DPSers don’t come back if they don’t improve. In that reality, people talk about the instances and communicate who’s job is what. In that reality – the one in which people are people rather than asshatty robots – responsibility for failure is shared by the whole team, DPS, healer, and tank. It is, in reality, a team, and functions in a team dynamic.

Tolbold, apparently, has not instanced with anyone but total strangers, been required to carry the entire instance on his frail shoulders, and has never once been able to get DPSers to do anything but stand around and scratch their belfy butts. I’d be bitter in that scenario, as well.  But I’d reach a far different conclusion, because I read more than my own blog and those like it.  Every day I read about yet another group of my friends getting through another tough fight, in which everyone worked to get the job done and nobody was getting off on blaming one or the other particular role in the group.

The choice is yours, of course, but if you’re inclined to listen to this guy, I gotta tell you he’s about as wrong as a whistling fish. You can do better than he as a source of information when it comes to MMOs.  Especially since, yaknow, he doesn’t blog about MMOs now.

1. I feel dirty linking back, but fair’s fair. [↩]

It is all the rage these days to disavow any regard whatsoever for damage meters. One is expected to denounce their use, purge them from one’s system, deny them access to your chat window, and make fun of those using them.

Well, I say, nuts to that!

If you are DPS, this is your instrument

Neil Armstrong did not land on the moon by looking out the window¹, he used instruments – and Buzz Aldrin calling out other instrument readings.  Lindbergh didn’t even have a front window, he flew across the Atlantic on instruments. There are automobile races where the participants don’t even depart at the same time – they completely use instruments to determine who won.

In short, a reliable instrument is worth any number of other observations.

And a damage meter is the DPS role’s instrument of measurement.

You need to know if you are performing properly

The DPS role is dependent on its numbers, whether you take them subjectively or absolutely is irrelevant.  But of the two, an absolute reference is much better than a relative one. Numbers are absolute. You can feed them into spreadsheets, save them off, compare them to each other. You can make multiple passes and chart your progress or lack thereof. Your damage meter is your friend. If you were doing 20K last week on a particular boss, and only 18K this week, you have something to look in to before you’re the cause of an enrage-timer wipe in the future.

Target dummies are liars

"Well, fine", you say, "turn it on for your target dummies, I got no problem with that, but using them in a live encounter is bad!"  To which I say, pfah!  Target dummies give you a baseline, but they don’t take anything into account that you get from a live boss. You won’t see all the group buffs, or group procs, or even be able to use your execute abilities such as Kill Shot or Decimate. You might as well just sit there with autoshot, the approximation will have the same level of accuracy (and much less variability!).

No, a live boss (or live trash, if that is your interest) is the only way to truly gauge your performance in a raid setting. And since things vary depending on raid make-up, procs, and the like, you will need multiple samples.

Well, you don’t need to run it for everyone

Yes, you do.

You are not a single unit. You are part of a team. And how you perform relative to the rest of the team is important, if for no other reason than that of self-preservation.  For if you’re performing in line with the guys at Elitist Jerks, but behind that of your guild (what, you think that EJ is infallible? Lol.). You may be in danger of being sat without realizing it.  Because if you’re part of a serious raiding guild, I guarantee that your Raid Leader is watching your performance.

The more you know …

But that’s what World of Logs is for!

It is indeed, and in my opinion it is a far more accurate instrument than Omen or Skada, provided all members contribute logs (if it’s just you, then it’s on par with the other two, not better). But you probably won’t have WoL for all of your Heroics, trash runs, and so forth. You need all the things. Else your dataset is incomplete.

A damage meter is always there.

People use them badly!

They do indeed. Jerks spam chat with them all the time. But not you, right?

And the damage meters don’t do that automatically, so if yours does, it’s totally your fault. You are misusing the instrument. Stop it.

What idiots do with damage meters is not my concern, and it is not the fault of the damage meter. Get over it.

I don’t need a damage meter to know how well I’m doing

Yes you do. You will always do better with solid statistics than you will with a "gut feeling".

But if you just want to use the Force, have I got a game for you.

It might also be that you’re a PvPer and see no need. I contend that you don’t even belong in this conversation. Fire up All Healers Must Die and go do that honorable thing you do.

There are valid performance issues.

Yes, there are. But not for me, and not for most people that I know of. If, however, you are one of those people, and cannot afford a computer made after 2001, then by all means don’t run with one, because for certain it does suck CPU cycles.

You already have problems and damage meters are the least of them, but, whatever.²

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

In general, however, a damage meter is a valuable and useful tool for DPS self-improvement.  Feel free to sneer at the idiots spamming party chat, and feel free to kick people that get hung up over somebody else’s DPS in a PUG³.  But don’t blame the instrument for these things.

After all, both Tommy Dorsey and myself play the same musical instrument. But nobody has ever proposed that the Trombone be banned because of me.⁴

Your damage meter is your friend

If you’re serious about self-improvement in a raiding environment, you need to use your damage meter to its fullest to provide nice, juicy data from which you can draw useful conclusions, and then apply those conclusions in such a way as to improve your performance (or detect bad decisions of that sort).

This is my damage meter. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My damage meter is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My damage meter, without me, is useless. Without my damage meter, I am ineffectual. I must use my damage meter wisely. I must DPS better than the boss that is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I shall.

My damage meter and myself know that what counts in this raid is not the DPS we do, our meter dumps to raid chat, or the noise we make. We know that it is the overall damage that counts. We will do massive damage.

My damage meter is human, even as I, because it is our life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its range, its triggers, its filters and its scope. I will keep my damage meter prepped and ready, even as I am prepped and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.

Before the Light, I swear this creed. My damage meter and myself are the defenders of my world. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but peace!

1. He looked AT the window, which had guide markers on it! [↩]
2. I also recommend 800×600 resolution. [↩]
3. We did that last night, and when asked why, the reason given was "Insufficient Beardiness." The fact that the mage in question was so quickly votekicked speaks for itself, however. He was an insufferable bore. [↩]
4. Well, my neighbors. And maybe my mom. [↩]

This week the Vorpal Bunnies forayed again into Blackrock Descent.  I’m happy to say that after a few tries, we were able to add Maloriak to our trophy case.

That’s  not what this is about.

In front of Mal’s room is this fine specimen, one Maimgor. Maimgor is just a trash mob, but he’s a tough one, and if you do something really wrong, it can all go wrong in an instant.

Noted is that the Bunnies are really good at finding how to do things really wrong.

Now, depending on your guild, you might have a policy that everyone die on the spot to save time, or you might have no policy, which is our situation, and so a few of us have a tendency to see if they can actually get away from the boss and life to see another day.

And thus it was when Maimgor killed both tanks and nommed on a very surprised warlock, a great many people had time to run away, get to the elevator, and ride it up to the next level.

"He can fly, you know", came across Vent.

"He’s not, though. He’s walking – holy crap, he’s waiting for the elevator!"

And he did. And then he rode the elevator to the top. My comrades of course had evacuated by that point, so when he got up there, he sniffed around, then rode the elevator back down and resumed his post.

Not sure if this is to be filed under "unintentionally funny" or "hey, an Easter egg!"

Grimm’s been hogging the spotlight with his fancy-pants Effers, but the rest of the crew is hanging tough with our original guild. Jasra’s darkness casts a pall, and we usually aren’t considered for raiding since it’s assumed we won’t wan to.

Last night the GM was really desperate and invited me along, and, well, we managed our guild-first kill of a Cataclysm boss.

Indirectly, Grimm helped out since I was able to peer into his notebook and assure the GM that, yes, we were on the right track (strat-wise) and just keep practicing execution. After three tries, we got him down and broke out the garlic and butter sauce.

OCV is a much more casual guild than Grimm’s guild, but there are many top-notch players within. Once everyone knew what was needed, that big burny prawn went down like a ton of bricks. Us casual types may not get the headlines, but we get the job done eventually.

Since I’m not really used to a raid rotation, some of us take longer than others to get the job done.